Progress on the Creatures 1 Baby Grendel
The main project I am currently working on involves the Creatures 1 female Grendels. I mentioned this project about a month ago, but I haven’t made much progress… Up until today, that is! I identified all of the areas which require updates, and there are far more than I imagined! Fortunately, the vast majority of these updates simply involve swapping the positions of sprites. There may be some necessary body data adjustments, but my initial test fixed the main problem with how baby female Grendels got around. The major problem involves their feet, which seriously hinders their movement. There is an additional problem that affects their hand, although this mainly poses a superficial graphical glitch. Have a look at the following comparison between the male baby Grendel sprites and the female baby Grendel sprites! Note that some of these poses are not used: They simply show all ten of the limb positions, which often are mixed to form the actual poses shown in Creatures 1.
This almost reminds me of those games where one has to find the differences between two similar images! There are actually problems with every single pose, although certain ones leap out a bit more! I will be correcting these problems, which will hopefully give these Grendels a better lease on life. I have another larger project in mind to recreate a female Grendel, although it will mostly be a lesson for me in body data and sprites. The initial changes should be released later this week, provided testing goes well!
Sheesh, I didn’t know the female grendels were THAT messed up. Granted, I do kinda like the arm thing the adult females have going on (it makes them look like they’re waving, which is a bit charming).
I’m happy you managed to get back to this project. Do you plan on fixing the adult females this week as well, or is that for a later endeavor?
I was pretty surprised, too! Every single limb has something to be changed, although as I mentioned, it shouldn’t be too terribly problematic.
I didn’t manage to come across any major issues with the adult female sprites: Do you have an image or a detailed description? The only possible sprite problems I found involve the right thigh and right forearm. I’m fairly certain the problem exists with the right forearm, since it involves two sprites which have swapped positions. Provided I can get a good before and after shot, I’ll also fix up that issue with this update! Let’s just hope the body data doesn’t need to be updated… Rearranging sprites can be tedious enough when they all look so similar! Ha ha!
Ahh! I am so very pleased about this project. The female adult grendels may have a couple issues, but the babies are just.. unfortunate. I suppose that’s because they never really made it into the original game, but still.
And trust me, I know how tedious rearranging sprites can be! I wish you the best of luck! :)
Besides the arm/thigh, the adult females also have an issue with their foot – watch one walk a little, and you’ll see that sometimes their foot completely detaches for a second. This also causes problems during some poses (a female proclaiming she’s bored and tapping her foot will scoot backwards significantly).
The worst part is that this issue exists not only in the actual C1 grendels, but in their conversions for C2 and C3. I’m really wondering why no one bothered to fix it during the conversion process.
Oh goodness, even from previous descriptions I never would have guessed how odd the female sprites can look. What seems even stranger to me is that some sprites which should be very similar or simply mirrored (I’m assuming 3 and 7 are both ‘being hit’ sprites for instance) can be so different.
I wish you all the best with your project – I’m sure you’ll make a lot of grendel fans very happy with it!
Jessi: Thanks for the luck! There are still a few minor sprite issues that probably won’t be fixed with this round of changes… I’m a bit of a perfectionist, and there are a bunch of pixels that could be improved a bit. That’s for another day, though! I will be fixing one other issue with the female’s hand where there is a big green area between her fingers. This can be seen in pose 7 above: Her hand has a more webbed effect, which I don’t think was the intended image!
GrendelMan: I’ve never experienced this issue, but I’ll certainly try to keep a close look out for it during my testing. It sounds more like an issue with the body data file, but the sprites could certainly be involved. I’m dedicated to fixing these female Grendels: I hate seeing such annoying glitches with them! Especially since it really does impact how they get around. Maybe these fixes can then be implemented in their C2 and C3/DS conversions!
Mip: Luckily, the main issue is not in creating new sprites, but just rearranging how they appear. A single sprite file contains numerous individual images: For the females, they’re all there… Just all mixed up! Thank you for the luck! I hope this will make current Grendel lovers happy, and maybe even entice others to enjoy the C1 Grendels again. I know the image glitches have made me shy away from the females when possible. I’ll be thankful when this project is completed and the females can walk around properly again!
I managed to take a picture of what I was talking about:
http://i300.photobucket.com/albums/nn27/ArcticSnail/Creatures/FemaleGrenFootProblem.png
Note where Ambryn’s foot is.
Then again, it was quite possible this was fixed in the adult female sprites included with the baby female grendels, hence why you never noticed it. I imagine it’s a body data issue, but it might be a really odd sprite issue.
Thanks for the image, Grendel Man! I believe this was fixed with some of the later female Grendel sprites, although I vaguely recall this happening to me in the past. It’s actually a sprite issue, where the individual images are ordered incorrectly. So for that pose, there is an incorrectly defined image.
The good news is that I’ve made lots of progress! I actually ended up recreating all of the baby and adult female sprites from the male sprites: It’s taken me quite some time, but the improvements are obvious! Everything should be ready to go tomorrow, aside from the updated female heads: I didn’t want to touch those just yet! But there should be a fair number of sprite and body data fixes… The best part is that the rough edges are gone! And, of course, that the females will be able to walk around properly!
Just have a few finishing touches and a few rounds of testing to go!